Archeologists Uncover Cause of Zombie NearApoc
by wneleh
Summary: The "Mythbusters," hailed as heroes, 'sparked' a disaster that could have ended civilization.


Archeologists Uncover Cause of Zombie Near-Apocalypse of 2012  
_"Mythbusters," hailed as heroes, were 'spark' of disaster that could have ended civilization_

by Helen W.

Instances of breakout zomification - popularly known as zombie apocalypses - have, of course, been a regular threat to humanity for the past thousand years, replacing warfare, bacterial and viral diseases, and plagues of frogs and locusts as the number one threat to human civilization throughout the explored galaxy. There was a time, however, when most people thought of zombies, if they thought of them at all, as, at best (or worst), mythical, the product of superstition mixed with too much local horticulture. When "Give me a hand" was a request for help, not dinner, when "Brains, brains" was solely a mid-exam call of a student to hir deity of choice.

Every schoolchild knows that the first zombie apocalypse began on Mars in 2062, and was put down at great cost, setting back interplanetary colonization a generation. The effects of the brutal Earth-side mop-up live on in our language today, in the curse words "nasa" and "goddardhead."

Archeologists have recently uncovered that this was, in actuality, the second breakout of public zombification. The first, in fact, occurred fifty years prior, on Earth near Old San Francisco. One can only imagine what would have happened if immediate efforts at control had not succeeded during that more primitive time. Would I be typing this and would you, dear reader, be reading? Or would both our lives be spent at a mere shuffle?

Would human life even exist, at all?

Fortunately, what experts are now calling the "Zombie Near-Apocalypse of 2012" was halted due to the action of a group of men and women who many at the time would have considered unlikely heroes: the cast and crew of a television [1] reality [2] science [3] show, _Mythbusters_. Unfortunately, they were also its cause.

What actually happened was suppressed at the time. The near-simultaneous destruction of the facilities where the show was produced, known as M5 and M7, despite being a half-mile apart, was attributed to an unstable batch of C4 being raided and misused by participants in a war between fans of rival popular music groups. The stars of the show (themselves known as Mythbusters) were credited with quelling the violence, at some personal sacrifice (much was made of the singeing of the mustache of show star Jaime Hyneman).

Recent excavation of the area for a new spaceport has uncovered recordings buried by the destruction of the facilities. Archeologists have worked for months interpreting this data, which can now be shared here for the first time.

We begin with the true origin of the incident, shown in this exchange between Jaime Hyneman and show co-star Adam Savage.

Jaime: I see you've been reading web comics again.  
Adam: Indeed I have!  
Jaime: Some day, we should do a steam punk show.  
Adam: Yes, we should! But today, we're going to take a look at the plausibility of the science in the Hugo-winning gaslamp fantasy sensation Girl Genius, written and drawn by Phil and Kaja Foglio.  
Jaime: Ah, Agatha Heterodyne!  
Adam: A girl after our own hearts.  
Jaime: The science in Girl Genius isn't well described, you know.  
Adam: And there's quite a bit of debate in the fan community about whether it's science at all, or a sort of technically-enhanced magic.  
Jaime: The spark.  
Adam: Is it the spark of life? Or are some of the characters just very good biologists.  
Jaime: There's only one way to find out.  
Adam: Yes. We need to see whether we can create life ourselves.  
Jaime: And give it to machines.  
Adam: Or hunks of flesh.  
Jaime: Let's try both.  
Adam: Yeah.

Hours of recordings show Adam and Jaime proceeded to try the standard life-creation techniques of the time - organic chemicals, electricity, a little radiant, a little light jazz.

Jaime: Smells like soup.  
Adam: I don't think it's supposed to smell at all.  
Jaime: The Jagerfolk say that Agatha Heterodyne smells good.  
Adam: I wonder what smells good to a Jager?

Of course this mucking about didn't work, and matters would have ended there if the other three Mythbusters, Tory Belleci, Grant Imahara, and Kari Byron, hadn't intervened.

Tory: I think you're going about this the wrong way. Sparks - the people with the ability to make the wonderful machines in the comics - they work by intuition.  
Grant: In a sort of fugue state.  
Jaime: Fugue?  
Tory: He likes big words.  
Grant: It's one syllable!  
Kari: Shush it, guys. [To Jaime and Adam] We see sparks experiment, sure, but their best work seems to happen spontaneously.  
Grant: And then it usually kills them.  
Tory: Right, so'll need to watch out for that.  
Adam: So what do you want to do?  
Tory: GIRL Genius, right? Let's play with Kari's brain a little and see what happens.

Further recordings show Kari being subjected to hypnotism; sleep deprivation; and a much more atonal form of jazz than used by Adam and Jaime. Finally, we see Kari seemingly sleepwalking into a lab and slinging around metal, then opening a freezer and doing similarly with sides of cow, while Grant and Tory snicker in the shadows. Finally a creature rises, sixteen feet tall: a veritable cow-giraffe. A carafe. And astride it, eyes blazing, sits Kari Byron, holding what may once have been a child's super soaker (a model not unlike that still in production - Ed.).

The animal and rider quickly leave the field of view of the camera, so what happens next is not recorded; later, clips show shuffling locals (and perhaps crew), streaming through a gate, down a street, into traffic, into the harbor. Later recordings show the Mythbusters using Grant as bait, presumably to gather the infected into one location.

At last, there's a shout - "It's going up!" - and all recording ends.

Archeologists are still trying to piece together the details. How exactly did Kari impart life to her steed, how did she liquefy it, and why did it have the same affect on living flesh as on dead? How was Kari cured? (She was later to serve as the president of UC-Berkeley.) And what exactly was it about Grant that made him so tasty?

* * * THE END * * *

[1] Television - how stories were told before the internet was invented.  
[2] Reality - 2012 was the height of the Age of Reality, during which there was a strict division between "what really happened" and "how it should have gone down."  
[3] Science - sufficiently analyzed magic (Phil and Kaja Foglio).


End file.
